Joey Halzle shares importance of players enrolling early

The amount of football players enrolling early in college has increased drastically over the last few years. Tennessee has been no exception.

New offensive coordinator Joey Halzle is happy with that. It gives the freshman time to make their mistakes on a longer timeline, which hopefully has them better prepared come Game 1.

“I just had the conversation with the guys leaving the field is getting to go through spring ball, it allows you to just make mistakes and fail forward,” Halzle said during media availability. “So when you get down to fall camp, when it’s time to start getting ready and the real bullets are about to start flying, you’re not making those initial freshman mistakes of just trying to figure out what is actually going on. What’s my call, seeing the signal, getting my cleats in the ground, all that type of stuff. You get to do that now. So now when you take the field in August, coming back for fall camp, you get to just go play the way you know how to play. You’re not trying to figure out what’s going on. That’s the biggest advantage that you get, you get to fail forward every single day.”

There are a lot of new faces in camp this spring for the Volunteers. THe biggest name among the early enrollees is Nico Iamaleava. The five-star quarterback out of Long Beach, Calif., was the No. 1 overall recruit and No. 1 quarterback in the 2023 On300 Ranking.

But he isn’t the only offensive player who has early enrolled. Skill position early enrollees include tight end Ethan Davis, wide receiver Nathan Leacock and running back Cameron Seldon.

Joey Halzle said his offense is a different beast

Another thing that makes enrolling early helpful to Tennessee players is that they get a chance to learn more thoroughly about the offensive they are going to be running.

While it can lead to some high-flying and high-scoring offenses, Josh Heupel and Joey Halzle’s offense is not a simple one to execute.

“It’s a different animal,” Halzle said. “We’re very, very different than a standard offense. If guys are good at feeling space, if they’re good at understanding structures of defense, if they’re good at reading leverage, they’re really good at what we do. What we do is different but it’s also for guys that understand it, that’s why they excel the way they do.”